How can I tell if a Django session is new?

Question

Within a view, is there an easy way to tell if this is the very first hit in a session?

I looked for something obvious like comparing session-create-date to session-last-accessed-date, but those fields don't seem to exist.

I could set a custom key in the session data, and then if the key is missing assume it's a new session, but I wondered if there were some cleaner way.

Thanks!

possible duplicate of [Django - detect session start and end](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4083426/django-detect-session-start-and-end) — ire_and_curses, Aug 28 '12 at 20:26

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 29 '12 at 01:39

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How about you calculate it via settings.SESSION_COOKIE_AGE minus my_session.get_expiry_age(). The closer to 0, the newer the session. Not sure though this is always zero for a first-hit session.

answered Aug 29 '12 at 01:39

Torsten Engelbrecht

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Yeah, I thought about that too. But like you say, the difference isn't guaranteed to be zero for a new session. – John Gordon Aug 29 '12 at 16:01
Except this I don't see a built-in way to do it. You might be able to find a workaround, extending session model (db sessions) or saving session creation somewhere else. Another idea is to save a flag in the session (on creation), a boolean or something which you toggle first time the session is used. – Torsten Engelbrecht Aug 30 '12 at 01:46

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 15 '20 at 07:40

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You could use the session_key. If request.session.session_key is None, that means the session object is new and hasn't been saved to the db yet.

answered Dec 15 '20 at 07:40

Judy T Raj

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How can I tell if a Django session is new?

2 Answers2